by A S Bond
“I’ve found something.”
“When? You’ve been in classes all morning!”
“Let’s just say I would appreciate your support in getting me that job.”
Brooke laughed.
“Smart ass. Okay, let’s have it.”
“The Canadian mining company that bought the patent? It’s registered in Newfoundland and Labrador province - fortunately halfway through, alphabetically - and the owner is one Miss Marguerite Marchant, although Jean Maynard is listed as a director. They’re a small operation with just one registered property, the mine itself in northern Labrador on an inlet called Okak. It’s one of dozens of so-called ‘junior’ mining companies that buy up promising claims, sometimes to work themselves, other times to sell off to a bigger company to do the actual mining if the lode is big enough. It’s a gamble and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. Okak seems to be very profitable - here.” She handed Brooke her notes.
“Wow!” Brooke was impressed. “What does it mine, nickel?”
“That’s the strange thing,” Alice said with a triumphant smile. “Okak is a model company; totally legit, never late with its taxes, a good corporate citizen, et cetera. Except that, according to the provincial record of mining and processing operations, Okak mine hasn’t recorded a single ounce of nickel - or any other thing of value - for over five years.”
“But it has an income?”
“It has a huge income.”
“Which it uses to buy hi-tech patents. I see what he meant about odd.”
“What?”
Brooke shook her head. “So I guess we need to find out who Miss Marchant is and what she wants with a hi-tech patent.”
“Way ahead of you.”
“Did you sleep at all last night?”
“After I finished my assignment in the library last night, I thought I’d do a bit more background on Maynard and I got lucky,” Alice said, lowering her eyes and shrugging in mock modesty.
“How?”
“According to American birth records, Maynard was born here, in New York state, but his Canadian mother’s maiden name was Marchant.”
“He’s using his aging mother to front a foreign company?”
“Yes. I doubt she’s ever been anywhere near a mine.”
Brooke picked up the phone.
Alice mouthed, “What are you doing?”
“Yes, I’ll hold.” Brooke said into the mouthpiece, rummaging in her bag for a credit card. She looked up at Alice. “I think I need to have a chat with Marcel Canning.”
Brooke’s flight to Boston arrived on time, but it took her another hour to get to the front of the line for a rental car. By the time she pulled out onto the Massachusetts Turnpike, it was already rush hour. As Brooke crawled through downtown in heavy traffic, her mind ran over everything she had learned in the past two days. Odd. Scott was right; that was the word. Brooke drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the SUV. What was she hoping Marcel Canning could tell her? Who the hell she was, to start with.
The traffic began to speed up as she left downtown Boston, and soon Brooke could glimpse the Charles River on her right, and beyond the graceful spires of Cambridge itself, all softened by the blushing shades of a million autumnal leaves. The university city was such a lovely place. She had visited several times when she worked in New York and knew it fairly well. The season was more advanced here than in D.C., though, and the sun could not take the distinct chill out of the evening air. Brooke shivered a little, whether from anticipation or cold, she didn’t know, but as she drove north across a bridge spanning the wide, brown river, she rolled up the window and turned on the heat.
Pretty, whitewashed New England homes stood back from the tree-lined road and dusk was fast approaching as Brooke drove through the suburb of west Cambridge. The company registration for Excelsior gave Canning’s address as 52 Payton Avenue, and she saw it now; a two-story home with a Dutch roof and a brick chimney on the gable end. The driveway boasted a new black Mercedes. Brooke pulled over and turned off the SUV’s engine. From her seat, she could see over the garden hedge. Lights cut through the gathering gloom from the ground floor; it looked as though someone was home.
With quick glance in the rear view mirror, Brooke slicked on some neutral lip gloss - she wasn’t really a makeup kind of girl -tidied her hair, which she twisted into a low ponytail, and pulled on a jacket. Brooke always found women responded best to the modestly smart academic look: professional, but not flashy.
She pressed the doorbell and heard a series of thumping noises that she guessed, rightly, were those of at least two children running down the stairs. The door opened and Brooke saw a set of wide-eyed twins in pyjamas standing behind a woman she assumed was their mother.
“Can I help you?” the woman was around forty, but youthful. Expensively so. Her sleek brown hair was fashionably cut just below the jaw, and a rich tan spoke of long vacations, or at least serious time at the spa. Brooke smiled in what she hoped was a friendly way.
“My name is Brooke Kinley,” Brooke said, and she held up her press pass. “I work for the Daily Post in Washington, D.C., and I’m looking for Marcel Canning.”
“Why?” The woman wasn’t exactly hostile, but she was cautious.
“I’m doing some research for a story and the name Excelsior came up. Are you Ms. Canning?”
“I’m sorry, but my business interests are private.” Bingo, Brooke thought. So she had found Marcel.
“I’m really interested in Okak Mining -” The door was closed now. “And Jean Maynard,” she added, raising her voice a little. She sensed stillness on the other side of the door. Had Marcel walked away?
A moment passed, during which Brooke debated the merits of banging on the door, or going back to the SUV to think about her next move, when the handle turned again and the door opened a crack. The twins had gone.
“What about Maynard?”
“Ms. Canning - it is Ms. Canning, isn’t it?”
The woman nodded, reluctantly.
“It is Maynard I’m investigating,” Brooke said. “I’m not interested in your private business. I just want to have a quick chat with you about a patent he bought five years ago.”
“I’m not going on the record. “ Marcel paused for a moment. “If you attribute anything to me, I’ll deny it.”
“I understand. This is deep background. I promise.” Brooke looked her in the eye.
“Well. I don’t have anything to hide,” the woman said finally. “Come in.”
She led Brooke through the hallway and into the living room, indicating that Brooke should sit down. She didn’t offer her anything to drink. Brooke looked around. The house was decorated in neutral colors, in line with the historic feel. Above the marble fireplace hung a large oil painting, probably the Charles River. Brooke took out a small digital recorder.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” the woman said.
“No problem.” Brooke put it back in her pocket and took out a notepad instead.
“I suppose you want to know about the microchip,” Marcel said.
“Ok, let’s start there,” Brooke said. “Who was the inventor?”
Marcel looked at her sharply, as if the question surprised her. “My husband, Ethan. He was a senior researcher at MIT, but he left to start his own business, and he developed the chip.”
“Which he sold?”
“Ethan had a choice: to manufacture the chip himself, or to license that right to another company in return for royalties. The chip has many potential uses, and there were quite a range of industries to which it could be of use.”
“Including arms manufacturers?”
There was a pause. “I wouldn’t know. Ethan never mentioned anything like that.”
“OK. Where does Maynard fit into this?”
“Well, we got an offer. It was a big one, but not to license it, to sell it outright, all the research, the uses, all the intellectual property. We would have no more claim on it.
The offer came directly from Jean Maynard himself, who I understand is some hot-shot businessman from New York.”
“And you accepted the offer?”
“No.” Marcel, perched on the edge of an easy chair, already looked uncomfortable, but now she began playing with a small gold locket that hung around her elegant neck. “No, Ethan wouldn’t consider it... I don’t know why, he just said ‘Not to that man.’ There were other interested parties at the time, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Ethan could be...he was occasionally a...difficult man. Kind, funny, but he lived very much up here.” She tapped her temple and smiled sadly.
“So you didn’t sell it to Jean Maynard?” Brooke was confused. If Marcel and Ethan didn’t sell to Maynard, why did the government think that they did?
“We didn’t sell it to anyone,” Marcel said. “Not at that time.”
“Why not?”
“That was when Ethan was killed, in a car crash.”
“I did know that. I’m very sorry.”
“Someone should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“The police said his blood alcohol was three times the legal limit, but Ethan didn’t drink.”
“Not at all?”
“Sometimes, but never more than a couple of beers at a time, maybe a glass of wine. He wouldn’t dream of drinking and getting behind the wheel. Never.” Marcel was visibly trembling now, but Brooke pressed on, hoping to get it all before the woman collapsed, or clammed up.
“Maybe he was celebrating, with such a big deal on the table, lots of money...”
“No.” Marcel’s mouth snapped shut and she glared at Brooke, daring her to challenge the story. Brooke made a choice. She followed the chip.
“But you have sold it?”
“Yes, after he ...died, I realized that Ethan’s life insurance was never going to be enough to pay everything off, and provide for the girls, college and everything...so I decided to sell it myself. I could, as we were both directors of Excelsior, and the invention belonged to the company.”
“So you looked elsewhere?”
“Sort of. Mr. Maynard made another offer, but - “
“Wait, personally? Did the numbers change?”
“Yes.” The expression in Marcel’s eyes was unreadable. “In fact he doubled it - “
“He doubled it?”
Marcel nodded. “But I knew that wasn’t what Ethan wanted, so I looked for another buyer. I figured if he was that eager to get it, then someone else would want it too. The patent application was still being processed - it takes years - but it hadn’t yet been published, when a Canadian mining company made me an offer.”
“Okak Mining.”
“Yes. They planned to use the chip in remote precision drilling, which I knew was one of the applications Ethan had in mind for it, but they wanted the patent application withdrawn, so the technology remained secret. They made a good offer - a great offer - to buy it outright, and my lawyers recommended I take it.”
“Did you ever meet anyone from Okak?”
“Yes, I met one of the directors, an older lady, French. Her name was Marchant.”
Despite her late night - the plane from Boston didn’t touch down until after midnight - at nine the following morning, Brooke called TechCorp. Maynard was CEO, but she knew it would be tough to get hold of him. After speaking to his press department and his assistant, Brooke finally got hold of his diary secretary, Annalise Duchamp.
“I’m sorry, he is not available.”
“When will he be available?”
“I can’t say; he is very busy.”
“I appreciate that, but I’m writing a story about a company called Excelsior and it will go to press with or without a comment from him.” Brooke was taking a chance with that; there was no way she was planning to go to print, but Annalise wouldn’t know that, and she wouldn’t want to be blamed for not passing on that forewarning to her boss.
There was a short silence at the other end of the line. Then, “I’ve never heard of that company, but I can tell you that Mr. Maynard will be entirely out of contact for the remainder of the week.” As if to verify this, she added, “He’s on vacation and totally out of contact.”
Brooke smiled down at the phone. “Thank you very much, that’s all I wanted to know.”
Brooke jumped up and ran across the newsroom to a dusty cupboard against the far wall. She yanked it open and a pile of large paper rolls almost buried her. Undeterred, she knelt and systematically worked through them until she found the correct label.
“Come on!” she called to Alice, who, puzzled, followed her through to the large, backlit tables of the old photo layout room. Brooke rolled out a large map of eastern Canada.
“You can get maps online, you know.”
“I know. Let’s just say I’m ‘old school’ about maps,” Brooke said. “I spent what seemed like most of my childhood out in the country with my Dad and three brothers and I was in charge of maps. They are so much more - reliable - than the digital version.”
“Don’t you mean hopelessly romantic, out of date and inconvenient?”
“Stop laughing and help me look for Okak. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be pretty close to a place called Nutak.”
“Nutak?”
“Where Maynard likes to entertain Senators. Ah, here it is!” She jabbed her finger at some tiny lettering on the Atlantic coast in the far north.
“And there’s Okak Inlet right next door,” Alice said. “So what?”
“Mr. Maynard is on vacation right now, Annalise Duchamp told me so herself. I’m betting he likes a bit of sport fishing at this time of year, don’t you think? And if it’s right next door to Okak mining, well...”
“Are you planning to go out there?” Alice looked at the map and back at Brooke. “It’s a long way for a wild goose chase.”
“Or a short hop across the border for the biggest story of my career.”
“No way!” Denzel said when she told him what she was planning to do.
“Denzel, this guy looks dirty. There are too many questions about how he got hold of the technology, and...”
“You need to nail it down right here in D.C. That’s what I pay you for.” Denzel got up and began pacing the room, his bulk blocking the light from the window each time he passed it. Being the youngest newspaper editor on the East Coast - and black, on top of it - Denzel had made it that far by working harder, longer and smarter than anyone else. And his call was final. It was usually right, too.
“And I’d like to go see exactly what kind of nickel mine buys technology it doesn’t use.” Brooke ignored the warning signs that Denzel’s’ patience was almost out. “In fact, I’d like to know what kind of nickel mine doesn’t produce nickel, but makes tons of cash anyway, wouldn’t you? I’ve got to go with my gut on this, Denzel. And I’ve got nowhere else to take it in D.C.”
“Your contact?”
“He’s given me everything he can right now. He needs me as much as I need him.”
Denzel paused and looked out of his window, across the city roofs to the stony certainty of the Washington Monument.
“Okay, I’m not going to stop you, but if you want to play Nancy Drew in the wilderness, do it on your own time.”
“Thanks....I think.”
“You’ve got one week from today, and then I want you back here, at your desk.”
“No problem.”
Brooke almost ran out his office and bumped right into Alice.
“I’m off for a week...”
“He said yes?” Alice’s eyebrows disappeared into her bangs.
“Sort of. But Alice - if anyone calls for me...”
“I won’t say where you are.”
“Tell them I’ve gone on a sea kayaking trip off the coast of Florida. There are no phones out there. Alice -” Brooke held the younger woman’s gaze for a moment. “It’s best you know nothing at all about this, Okay? If I’m right...well, I’ll be back soon.”
Chapter 5
“I think we could put her down there, Max,” Kyle said into the mouthpiece of his headset, pointing at a small lake below, crossed by the shadow of their little floatplane. It shimmered like a sapphire, dropped between deep green hills that rose sharply into mountains, distant in the north, but still visible from the cockpit on this clear day. “The EM survey showed up the clearest results at this end of the claim.” His friend and pilot, Max Tilson, nodded in agreement and circled around to approach from the east, dropping the old bucket onto the water like a pro.
The engine had barely stopped when the two young men jumped out of the cockpit and began throwing bags of camping supplies and other equipment onto the shore. They were both slim and athletic, one dark, the other fair, two friends who were adventurers by nature as well as by profession, and still young enough not to care much about anything. This mini expedition was the culmination of a great deal of research, mainly by Max, into bedrock geology, minerals and sediment deposits. Kyle just liked the challenge and excitement of prospecting in the wilderness.
They had staked the claim in the provincial capital of St. John’s just three days earlier; a few lines drawn on the map and a small fee were all it took to get the option on this remote chunk of Labrador. It was a big risk - there was, after all a reason why this land was still available at the start of the twenty-first century - but risk-taking, and eternal hopefulness, are essential characteristics for prospectors. All the two friends had to do now was get some hard evidence of the presence of a valuable metal or mineral, and sell the claim at a profit.
Kyle, the older of the two by a year or so, rubbed a week’s worth of stubble thoughtfully and squinted at the sky. It was only just past midday, but the days shortened quickly this far into the Canadian north, and they both wanted to get in some serious prospecting before nightfall. He swung a tent bag into his shoulder and gripped the handle of a machete with his other hand.
“Let’s find a place for the base camp, get the tent up and then we can start verifying those readings.”
The willows along the shoreline were dense and tangled, choking the mouth of the forest and clawing their way down to the water. But away from the lake, the forest thinned into spruce and fir. Here, the light was dim and the air cold on Kyle’s face. Yet as he worked, a feeling of menace pressed down on him, like a shadow caught in the corner of his eye.